The Online Shopping Thread

This is a discussion on The Online Shopping Thread within Gadgets, Computers & Software, part of the Shifting gears category; I would humbly request all those who have posted bad/good experiences with Amazon to kindly mention if the product which ...

I would humbly request all those who have posted bad/good experiences with Amazon to kindly mention if the product which they bought was Amazon fulfilled or was from some other seller.
Because honestly with non Amazon fulfilled sellers you have high chances of going wrong. It is as good or as bad as ebay. In fact I would rate ebay better due to their rating system.

I personally have never faced any issues with Amazon fulfilled items and have found their way of operation aa good as it was two years ago. In short, positive.

Now the most annoying part is how much they manipulate the rating and reviews.

A review is supposed to be a pointer to another shopper on the quality and experience. Your review don't tell why you call it "crappy". Its more of emotion than data. Try to be very objective in your review.

Also price of the product cannot ideally be part of the review. it keeps changing. Today when you buy it may be high compared to other sellers, tomorrow it may be low.

I have given up on Amazon completely. I had to return the last three goods purchased from them. Yes, they promptly pick up the return, but in one of the case I had to chase them to get my money refunded.

Now the most annoying part is how much they manipulate the rating and reviews. I posted 2 reviews yesterday. One was for a product I purchased 1 year back and I gave a 4 rating. They happily posted in on their website.
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Well there are some words that they look for. It works the same way here at TBHP. Try removing the word crap and it will go through.
Check out how my friend gave his review in the most uncanny way.

I would humbly request all those who have posted bad/good experiences with Amazon to kindly mention if the product which they bought was Amazon fulfilled or was from some other seller.
Because honestly with non Amazon fulfilled sellers you have high chances of going wrong. It is as good or as bad as ebay. In fact I would rate ebay better due to their rating system.

I personally have never faced any issues with Amazon fulfilled items and have found their way of operation aa good as it was two years ago. In short, positive.

Regards

I agree with your observations. I have been purchasing stuff from Amazon since many years now and i always make sure that i buy it from 'amazon fulfilled' items. Only once I took a chance to buy an item which is not 'amazon fulfilled' and i really had a bad experience to return it back. So, other than this, i never had any issues with Amazon (with more than 70 orders so far). Couple of times, i had to interact with their CC, but they are always responsive and have addressed my concern to my satisfaction.

Thanks to everyone for your responses. I agree "crappy" could be considered a slang but not an obscene word.
I could word it mildly like "extremely poor quality", but then it is mild and that is not what my experience has been!
I have been buying from Amazon for many many years in India and US. I have had bad experience with ebay in past, but not with Amazon until recently.
Like many of you commented, buying and refund process with Amazon is still way better than others. However they are falling short is screening the sellers and keeping commitment on delivery in terms of quality and timing.
I bothered to write it here because I had three consecutive bad experiences and wished to hear what others have experienced. Otherwise I have no interest and time for pushing my feedback through their screening process.
From many of you I hear you never had a bad experience or have a different (positive) opinion. Thanks and good for you I would say.
And I wouldn't compare T-BHP forum to Amazon feedback system. Here we are members and on Amazon I am a buyer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sherlocked

I would humbly request all those who have posted bad/good experiences with Amazon to kindly mention if the product which they bought was Amazon fulfilled or was from some other seller.
Regards

The three items I had to return were not fulfilled by Amazon. But I still hoped for a better service based on past experience.

Correct quality/price is not guaranteed even for the item fulfilled by amazon, but refund/return may work fine for them. Recently I picked an item which was under lightening deal - List price Rs.758 and was available under deal for Rs.299. When I received the item I found from the product tag that actual MRP is just 360. Seller jacked up the list price more than double the MRP amount (which is illegal) to make it looks like we customer is getting a nice discount. I reported multiple time to get their attention, and even now I see the same item at list price Rs.758.

Anyone has an experience with AliExpress shipping? I ordered a set of DRLs for my car, and the shipping method shown is Aliexpress standard international shipping. I am not sure how and with which carrier they are going to send the package. Anyone has tried this before?

China post. For peace of mind choose a buyer who will send by China or any other country Registered mail. You will be able to track the item all the way. If the cost is just a few $, then you can take the chance with the package not having a proper tracking capability.

I recently purchased a few items from Amazon USA and happened to cancel one of them. The refund process was a disaster. I don't know if it is due to different banking systems or way they conduct online shopping in the USA. The amount was immediately debited from my account on placing the order. On my request, Amazon was prompt on cancelling my order and said that the refund will be done in under 10 days. But it took me 45 days and multiple Emails and phone calls to finally get the refund.

The confusion is that my bank said they want the TRN ( Transaction reference number) to be able to locate my funds. The Amazon USA people said they have never heard of anything like this and all they could provide me was a "settlement verification code". Now I am not sure what these really mean in layman's language but they made me really run from one to the other. In the end I had to resort to the Indian way of communicating with my bank and someone sane there finally agreed to look into the matter. I provided them with screenshots of the Email from Amazon stating that the order was cancelled and they never even debited the amount but it is put in some sort of authorization fund and my bank should release it from there back into my account.

Also my second query is don't international transactions require your card's CVV or online transaction passwords etc? I have recently bought stuff from both Amazon US and UK stores and all you need is to put in your card number and DOE and it gets processed. How do they stay away from banking frauds? Are we ahead of these places in terms on security of our online transactions?

I would humbly request all those who have posted bad/good experiences with Amazon to kindly mention if the product which they bought was Amazon fulfilled or was from some other seller.
Because honestly with non Amazon fulfilled sellers you have high chances of going wrong. It is as good or as bad as ebay. In fact I would rate ebay better due to their rating system.

So let me get this right, Amazon.in has 2 classifications of retailers, one called "Amazon fulfilled" and the "non-Amazon fulfilled", and both these classifications are made by the company themselves. The company chose to also keep "unfulfilled" fly-by-night con-artists as retailers who are responsible for the dissatisfactory deliveries, wrong deliveries and inflated pricing and YET, the company so masterfully convinces people of its helplessness as one didn't choose their "fulfilled" retailer whatever that means. I really want a debate with Jeff Bezos and by the time I'm done his company will have more holes than Swiss cheese.

As far as I can read, the fulfilled retailers aren't angels either, going by Latheesh's experience above. This is the last thing anyone expects when buying a product, sending it for returns, re-ordering another products, sending emails for refund.. is ANY employee of Amazon, an MBA graduate or do they just freestyle and improvise on the fly? I'm an operations specialist and I cringe at the workings of these e-commerce websites, why are concepts like TQM taught? To ensure zero error as the end goal, not the other way around.

Also my second query is don't international transactions require your card's CVV or online transaction passwords etc? I have recently bought stuff from both Amazon US and UK stores and all you need is to put in your card number and DOE and it gets processed. How do they stay away from banking frauds? Are we ahead of these places in terms on security of our online transactions?

There are no additional security measures apart from CVV, when you do transaction in foreign currency using credit card. Amazon by default forces you to save your credit card information before making the payment, including the CVV information.
For all my transactions made in Aliexpress, CVV was required.

There are no additional security measures apart from CVV, when you do transaction in foreign currency using credit card. Amazon by default forces you to save your credit card information before making the payment, including the CVV information.
For all my transactions made in Aliexpress, CVV was required.

Amazon internationally does not even require the CVV. And yes there is no option to not save the card information. You have to manually go and delete it once the order has been placed. But I am interested in knowing that don't online frauds take place there? I am sure the number of people using card payments would be much higher in western countries and still they don't need any kind of security measures that we follow in India?

Amazon internationally does not even require the CVV. And yes there is no option to not save the card information. You have to manually go and delete it once the order has been placed. But I am interested in knowing that don't online frauds take place there? I am sure the number of people using card payments would be much higher in western countries and still they don't need any kind of security measures that we follow in India?

Cost benefit analysis about whether it is cheaper to take lower key measures to fight fraud or go all out with chip and pin.

The second and even more major issue is a huge legacy base of POS equipment that does not support anything but magstripe.

Now the most annoying part is how much they manipulate the rating and reviews. I posted 2 reviews yesterday.

No offense mate, but your review is very generic, and any third person reading this review would be hard pressed to understand why the product is " crappy" according to you. As pointed out by Amazon, you should have been specific about how the product quality was misrepresented by the seller, you having given pointers in the post itself.

Am no advocate for any of the online retailers (though I do quite a lot of online shopping) but calling Amazon manipulative for rejecting this review is too harsh.

I would humbly request all those who have posted bad/good experiences with Amazon to kindly mention if the product which they bought was Amazon fulfilled or was from some other seller.
Because honestly with non Amazon fulfilled sellers you have high chances of going wrong. It is as good or as bad as ebay. In fact I would rate ebay better due to their rating system.

I personally have never faced any issues with Amazon fulfilled items and have found their way of operation aa good as it was two years ago. In short, positive.

2. Market Place : Had to call up customer service twice to initiate the refund process. Pickup was erratic was rescheduled a couple of times, but once the item was picked up, the refund was credited in 10 days.

Make sure you read the retrun policy before buying as most of them have reduced their windows or have made ad-hoc changes due to the festival blitz.